Collaboration at WHOLE Centre

A major strength of the WHOLE Centre is its integration within a strong network of national and international academic partners. It strengthens WHOLE’s life-course perspective on women’s health by integrating expertise in biological, clinical, psychological, and social dimensions of mental health. Through shared researchers, access to unique infrastructures, joint activities, and complementary research aims, these collaborations contribute to WHOLE’s mission of developing interdisciplinary, inclusive, and translational research that improves prevention, diagnosis, and care for women across different stages of life.

National collaborations

WHOLE is anchored in all three disciplinary domains at Uppsala university and linked to established centres, represented in WHOLE’s leadership:

• HER MIND at Karolinska Institutet, advancing research and education in women’s mental health.
• WOMHER, one of Europe’s leading scientific environments for women’s mental health across the reproductive lifespan, providing doctoral education courses, interdisciplinary experience and support in contact with relevant stakeholders.
• The Endometriosis Centre in Uppsala, a clinical excellence centre conducting translational research on innovative diagnostics and treatment strategies.
• HEFUU (Centre for Health Economics Research), contributing expertise in health economic evaluation and register-based health economics and causal inference.
• The Centre for Medical Humanities (CMH), integrating theory and methods at the intersection of medicine, humanities, and social sciences.
• The Centre for Digital Humanities, AI4Research and UUniFI, providing interdisciplinary expertise in digital methods, AI, and machine learning.
• The Centre for Disability Research (CFF), UU
• MTSI - Uppsala MedTech Science & Innovation
• SciLife-Lab, offering advanced lab infrastructure and cutting-edge molecular and imaging technologies.
• Other important national partners include:
• Sbi (Swedish Institute for Children’s Books), supporting outreach on youth literature and health narratives.
• The Mamma till Mamma and Endometriosis user organisations
• Region Uppsala
• Region Stockholm

International collaborations

WHOLE brings together a broad network of leading universities and clinical settings, including:

• Copenhagen University Hospital (Denmark)
• Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria del Hospital Gregorio Marañón, Madrid (Spain)
• King’s College London (UK)
• National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece)
• University of Dresden (Germany)
• University of Southern Denmark
• University of Toronto (Canada)
• University of Tübingen (Germany)
• University of Zurich (Switzerland)
• Diakonhjemmet Hospital Oslo (Norway)
• University of Salzburg (Austria)
• University College Cork (Ireland)
• Leipzig University (Germany)
• KU Leuven (Belgium)
• Harvard School of Public Health (USA)
• University of Colorado School of Medicine (USA)
• National Institute of Mental Health (USA)
• Erasmus University Medical Center, Rotterdam (Netherlands)

These collaborations span expertise from neuroimaging, endocrinology, and epidemiology, AI to medical humanities, gender studies, and digital health. They provide access to complementary cohorts, biobanks, preclinical models, and advanced methods, while fostering reciprocal exchange of knowledge and training opportunities. WHOLE researchers participate in EU HORIZON projects, EU COST actions,national/international PhD schools (e.g. IRTG) and relevant national and international consortia (e.g. ENIGMA, FLAME, DOME, Swedish Collaboration on Digital Care Research).

Through this national and international academic network, WHOLE is firmly embedded in a global research ecosystem, ensuring high methodological quality, broad dissemination, and international impact.